[Westheim]

2063 DRAFT POOL ANALYSIS

The Raccoons had just one pick inside the first 70 for the upcoming draft – it was #12 to be precise – after signing away their second-round pick with Josh Elling and having once more no compensation picks for shedding mostly chaff.

Which didn’t mean we wouldn’t go through the motions and put together a shortlist with 126 players for the occasion – of which somehow like 15 were catchers this year, and then again only one that wasn’t on there merely for late-round considerations. It seemed to be a bit of a position player draft overall, with few overwhelmingly inspiring starting pitchers in the mix, although there were a few on the venerable hotlist (*high schoolers):

SP Alan Fullen (13/12/15) *
SP Joe Whitley (12/16/9) *
SP Eric Siebert (12/12/13) *

CL Allan Bergerud (17/14/12)
CL Mike Martin (17/11/10)

C Justin Hart (11/12/10) – BNN #8

INF John Schmidt (17/2/16)
3B/2B Morgan Jones (14/5/8) *
3B/2B David MacFarlane (9/11/13)

LF/RF Ian Streng (10/13/13)
OF Bill Davidson (9/15/12) – BNN #4
OF Juan Licona (10/12/15) * – BNN #3

There was very little overlap with the BNN top 10 this year, partly because they were quite infatuated with a bunch of two-pitch starting pitchers, and we weren’t gonna pick those with the first-round pick under most circumstances.

All the position players listed were also defensively adept to at least some degree – and Schmidt looked like a Gold Glove machine at any spot in the infield – with the exception of Streng, who needed to be hidden in leftfield with an invisibility cloak. There were a few more power prodigies out there with sketchy contact ability, like LF/RF Brian Terrell, who also had the defense of a guy tying his glove to his head and trying to make catches with his cap.

We’d only get one selection from this list and then it would take a long while to get another pick in the third round. A starting pitcher would be nice. We already took a closer with our first-round pick last year (and you might hear reasonably soon of Jesse Dover, who was a bit of a dumb ****, but had a 2.18 ERA in AAA), but we considered sneaking Hart with the #12 pick. He was going to turn 21 later this year, would probably debut at Ham Lake, was a switch-hitter, and while he was nothing special behind the dish and had average catcher mobility (read: none), it looked like he might actually be able to move into a regular role by something like 2065. Until then the Coons would patch it up with Arellano, pretending nothing was wrong.